A
Drop of
Water hangs
On the end of a
Faucet until it snaps
Free; falling through eternity,
Not knowing that its singular loneliness
Is something of wonderment for the small
Boy watching a lifetime fall back into
The pool of sameness, clear
blue ripples forever
now still.
Dark Age
old age is distant
from me
yet Donne has told me
not to worry
about the tolling
of the bells
or the desiccated opossum
that I pass
every day to work
or my dog injected
on the sterile stainless-steel table
or the cancers that have invaded
my grandmother's intestines
and lungs—
how death's durian fingernails
scrape my bare shins asunder
reminding me—
or how when I skulk
nearer to happy pigeons
they scatter
and the moment is dead
like paper
yet I assure myself
I have time
Outside, a light grey ash is falling from the sky like rain.
I hurt, I gasp
for breath.
Onto the silver, moonlit snow,
between the idea and the reality,
I am
gently elevated from what
in truth is our dismal world
on the white cloud of a well-meant delusion.
Anything to take my mind away
from where it's supposed to be.
Could these sensations make me feel
the pleasures of a normal man?
The question is detrimental,
paralyzing my thoughts.
I see her—
was beautiful
but nothing really was there.
Sakatani and I
Sometimes Sakatani walks alone at night among the drunk couples and party goers and bar hoppers and the poor homeless until I stop and wonder where I was headed to in the first place. I look around and see things I like: the bright lights that make me small, the people acting out HBO-mini series in front of clubs, and the bouncing bounding sound of life off the glass and concrete walls. He shares some interest in what I like and has arrested images onto paper, but nothing comes close to answering the questions that hang in the back of my head like gangsters in an alley, like "where must I go?" and "who must I be?" Perhaps I should not worry, I will die, and he will live among these pages somewhere. I give myself to his cause piece by piece, even though I know he is apt to lie and contort meaning and confuse bonito with bonita. When Sakatani writes I see fata morganas of myself over the horizon of ink, but as much as I try to leap out of him, I must remain. I tried to free myself long ago like Siddhartha, but I landed back within. So, I must write and write and write to shed everything and everything into forever nothing until I flake away and all that is left is him.
Love on The Line
Love me until you obliterate me
Said the mountain to the rain
Its sands flowed to the shore
These telephone lines drip heavy
With your words compressed
The message arrives faster than I
And the hearts drawn with snow
Melt before spring
Between your fingers and the water
Between the ocean and the shore
There is a boulder eroding
Desiccated by the sun and worn by the water
Find me there looking dumb
Exit Sign
I exit into the world
The trees let their tongues slip
I reach into my throat and pull out a part of me
But it puddles through my fingers onto the sidewalk
You and me eat ramen in the city
Watch the dark waves punch the rocks after
Santa is drunk on the beach
Walking to my car the smell of exit signs reach me and
A dead cat poses in vogue and reminds me
Of words not said but felt
Alone